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SEATTLE, WA — The Washington State Supreme Court ruled that medical cannabis patients don’t need proper paperwork to be acquitted of their pot charges, the Associated Press reports. The medical necessity defense is a common-law concept—meaning it existed in the unwritten legal code of the English empire before America even existed—that allows a citizen to treat themselves as they wish when necessary for their medical well being.

“This is the most important ruling for the rights of medical marijuana patients that has happened in a long time,” Seattle defense attorney Douglas Hiatt told the AP.

In a 5-4 split decision regarding wheelchair-bound pot-growing patient William Kurtz, the state’s highest court wrote that the written medical marijuana law does not invalidate the common-law defense.

“We reject the contention that by scheduling a drug the legislature has also decided the efficacy of that substance for purposes of a medical necessity defense. … To hold that this Act limits existing defenses for medical necessity would undermine the legislature’s humanitarian goals.”

“This ruling is an important victory for the rights of medical marijuana patients in Washington,” says Mark Cooke, attorney at the ACLU of Washington, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Kurtz. Prosecutors in the state typically file pre-trial motions to disallow pot-charged patients from mentioning the state’s 1998 voter-enacted medical cannabis law to the jury, and the ruling means that such defendants will still be able to raise a medical marijuana defense.

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